Page 131 of You Float My Boat

‘Stay here. Please. Stay here and wait for me to come back. I need to talk to you. It’s important.’ My eyes flicked to Oz, who was no longer staring at his feet, imploring him to understand what I was talking about. ‘Keep him here.’

I didn’t wait for his or Brooks’ reply, before I took off after Violet.

She hadn’t got as far as I’d expected; walking with Stella’s arm wrapped around her while her head was dropped onto her shoulder must have slowed them down.

‘Violet … Violet wait.’ I picked up the pace, ‘Violet!’

Stella turned around first, dropping her arm as Violet ran a hand under her nose. Even from fifty metres away I could tell she’d been crying; each tear streaming down her cheek may as well have been an arrow straight in my chest.

I’d really screwed this up.

‘What do you want, Charlie?’ she sniffed when I stopped in front of her.

‘I want to talk to you. To explain.’

‘There’s nothing to explain, Charlie. I understood perfectly clearly.’

I frowned, that made one of us then, because Ididn’t.‘What do you understand?’

‘That I wasn’t important enough for you to consider when you agreed to go on a date with Evie.’

I sighed so deeply it made my brain throb.

‘I didn’t agree to go on a date with her,’ I started, except that’s exactly what I’d done, so I raised my hand before Violet jumped in to point it out. ‘I don’t mean adatedate. It wasn’t a romantic date. I asked her what it would take for her to leave me alone.Usalone – me and you. And her reply was she’d leave me alone if we won today. But if we lost the race, then I needed to take her out for a single drink. Just one. One.’

‘And you agreed.’

‘Of course I agreed. I never thought we’d lose. I wasn’t going to bet against myself. And I should point out, I was right, we didn’t lose. So I don’t really understand why you’re so mad at me,’ I snapped as the tension and stress from weeks … months, even years of dealing with Evie’s bullshit hit again.

That she was on the verge of ruining another good thing in my life was almost too much to contain.

Except, given the way both Stella’s and Violet’s eyes narrowed, I immediately wished I hadn’t snapped quite so loudly. ‘I’m sorry …’ God this was hard enough without having an audience too. ‘Stella, d’you think you can go and find something else to do, please?’

I didn’t miss the way she glanced at Violet for permission before stepping to the side. ‘Sure, I was about to call my parents anyway.’

I reached out and took Violet’s hand, giving a small thanks that she allowed me to do so, because it felt like it could have gone either way.

‘I’m mad, because you didn’t tell me about it, Charlie. I had to find out through Evie. Now I understand why she was looking so smug. I feel so foolish.’

‘I’m so sorry, it really was a stupid, thoughtless thing to do. I’m sorry about Evie, I really am, and that you’ve been dragged into this whole mess. I should have told you, but it meant so little to me that it didn’t occur to me to do so. And because I never would have gone on a date with her anyway, I forgot until you mentioned it.’

She gave a loud sniff, running her hand under hernose again before pressing her palms deep into her eye sockets to stop the tears.

‘Look, I understand how awful she is, I really do,’ she sniffed again, ‘but put yourself in my position. When Bitters had his arm around me, you almost punched him before storming off. Yet you just expect me to be okay with the fact that you agreed to go on a date with the love of your life.’

‘What?’ I scrubbed both hands through my hair, linking my fingers behind my head, hoping to relieve the pressure that seemed to be building in my brain. ‘Violet … no.’

How did I begin to explain to her that wasn’t the case?

Evie might have been the love of my life once, but that ended the day Violet walked into the Blue Oar two and a half months ago. Though in reality it ended long before that,yearsbefore. Maybe she’d never been the love of my life, because I’d never felt about Evie the way I felt about Violet.

It had just taken my brain a little longer to catch up.

‘I loved her once, when I was sixteen. But since you came into my life for real, it’s like I had a reset. My life began again.’

‘Charlie …’ the sniffs got heavier, ‘don’t you see? It’s exactly what she said to me – you always find your way back to one another. I thoughtIwas naïve,’ she added with a huff that was so laced in sarcasm and totally un-Violet I had to take a step back.

I was not naïve. I knew full well what Evie Waters was capable of, probably more than anyone – she couldbe awarded a gold star for causing chaos. Which is why this entire conversation was all the more frustrating.

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